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VANCOUVER - With all the glowing praise that has been heaped on her over the last year, Kadeisha Buchanan’s head should be three times the size it is, ensuring she never loses an aerial challenge.

But with a maturity level far beyond her 18 years, the soft-spoken product of some of Toronto’s tougher neighborhoods is simply trying to be one of the girls on a Canadian women’s soccer team undergoing a youth-infused transformation in advance of next year’s FIFA World Cup.

“I don’t think it’s difficult,” says Buchanan, a dynamic centre back of transitioning into a squad of veterans, several of whom have been together since the 2002 FIFA U19 women’s worlds.

“My teammates encourage me to bring what I bring to the team. And I feel more mature just being around the girls, just learning from them, but interpreting my own way . . . putting in my personality, but just being me.”

What she is an intuitive talent who reads the game incredibly well, passes with precision and isn’t afraid of the physical battles in the box.

Tonight, she and Rebecca Quinn, another 18-year-old centre back, will be front and centre as seventh-ranked Canada faces No. 2 Germany in a friendly at B.C. Place.

A year ago, at 17, Buchanan was Canada’s player of the match after she helped shut down American star striker Abby Wambach in a loss to the U.S.

In May, after she soared high to decisively knock in a header off a corner in Canada’s 1-1 tie with the Americans in Winnipeg, head coach John Herdman referred to the precocious teenager as “the Christine Sinclair of defenders.”

Her international experience helped make her a star during her freshman season at West Virginia University, which won the Big 12 Conference but fell in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Duke coach Anson Dorrance said in the fall after his then No. 1-ranked Blue Devils faced the Mountaineeers that Buchanan “might be the best centre back in the country.”

The youngest of seven girls raised by a single mom, Buchanan found her escape from the challenging upbringing on the soccer field. She was just 15 when Canadian head coach John Herdman first spotted her at a U17 training camp. She was, he said, “streaks ahead of anyone I’d ever seen before.”

She was too young to take to the 2012 Olympics, where Canada won bronze, although Herdman says now “she probably could have handled it. She’s that good.”

While she has cemented her place in the starting lineup over the last year, Quinn has taken advantage of injuries to veterans Lauren Sesselman and Carmelino Moscato to force herself into the picture at the all-important centre back position.

“A modern centre back can play like a midfielder,” says Herdman. “They can disguise their passes. They have a range of different types of passes and they can defend. These younger players have been able to do that.

“Those injuries have opened the doors up. That’s football.”

Quinn made her senior team debut at the Cypress Cup in March and has had three strong performances, says Herdman, including in that 1-1 tie against the U.S. two months ago.

A midfielder in her freshman season at Duke, Quinn says the transition into the senior national team from Canada’s U20 squad has been seamless thanks to Herdman’s approach to incorporating young players.

“The team is so unique in that way,” she says. “Even at that first camp, you’re just so involved. You’re answering questions in meetings and you’re already playing a huge role.

“That’s what John emphasizes to us. You’re not here to fill a position, you’re actually here to make an impact.”

Both Buchanan and Quinn like to keep the ball at their feet and key the high-tempo, possession-style game that Herdman is trying to fashion. Fewer over-the-top direct balls and more clever in-and-out passing to create space.

Other youngsters brought into the national team in the build up to the home World Cup include fullback Sura Yekka, 17, and midfielders Ashley Lawrence, 18, and Jessie Fleming, 16. All are from Ontario.

The fact a backline that included Buchanan, Quinn and Yekka – Rhian Wilkinson, 32, was the only veteran – helped hold the U.S. to just one goal back in May didn’t go unnoticed.

“They completed dominated the U.S. team,” said Canadian midfielder Kaylyn Kyle. “I think it’s incredible. And then you’ve got Jessie Fleming, who captained our U17 team, coming in and she just has such a soccer brain and just loves being on the ball.

“It’s super exciting. We almost need to shake up the team a bit. It puts you on your toes and makes you better, the team better and the whole organization better.”

Herdman wants the teenagers to push the older players, to inject some speed and youthful energy. All of them will also get some crucial international experience in front of noisy home crowds this summer when they line up for Canada in the U20 World Cup.

“It’s surreal, it really is,” says Quinn of the opportunity to play back-to-back major tournaments in your own county. “The U20s is coming up a lot faster than we all expect.”

The same might be said of the next wave of talent into the senior national team.

CANADA FACES NO. 2 GERMANY

They have re-fashioned their game and incorporated some youth and speed. But can the Canadian women’s soccer consistently impose themselves while playing the world’s best?

The seventh-ranked Canadians, who tied the powerful U.S. 1-1 in Winnipeg in May, plays host to No. 2-ranked Germany tonight at BC Place. It’s another in a series of tune ups prior to next year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada.

“The last time we played against Germany (a 1-0 loss last year), we defended well, we hung on for 90 minutes . . . but we definitely didn’t threaten them in a way that, if you’re going to win a World Cup, you have to,” head coach John Herdman said this week.

Canada’s attack is still driven in large part by veteran striker Christine Sinclair, Canada’s all-time leading scorer, getting the ball in scoring position. But more and more that involves a tactical build up featuring midfielders and forwards comfortable in a quick-passing, ball-control offence that patiently waits to exploit good opportunities.

That won’t be easy against a German squad featuring goalkeeper Nadine Angerer, the FIFA women’s player of the year, and a solid back line.

“It’s the best block in the world,” says Herdman of the German defence. “They’re physical, they move collectively together on every blade of grass. They’re so hard to break down. It’s a huge challenge.”

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